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Nagarjuna (c. 150–250 CE) with a Buddhist Master
c. 1300s
- Medium
- gum tempera on sized cotton
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Overall: 57.8 x 45.1 cm (22 3/4 x 17 3/4 in.)
- Culture
- Nepal
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- Gift of George P. Bickford
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Nagarjuna, the Buddhist philosopher from southern India, sits on his eponymous red and black serpents, or naga. His interlocutor may be his disciple Aryadeva. A volume of the Perfection of Wisdom, honored with flowers, is on a golden bookstand between their heads. The figures sit beneath flowering and fruiting trees with peacocks and parrots, evoking the landscape of India. Lineage masters of the Sakya order of Buddhism are aligned in the top row, beginning with Virupa at the upper right. The monk who was the donor of this painting is in the lower left corner.
